Thursday, April 12, 2012

Medical Daily: Drinking Alcohol May Significantly Enhance Problem Solving Skills

Not to condone drinking (note it states a couple of beers or glasses wine - not being very drunk), but interesting in how it shows that creative thinking requires being open to new ideas, change, finding new paths. Innovation is not possible by thinking the same ways as usual.

"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them". Albert Einstein

Medical Daily: Drinking Alcohol May Significantly Enhance Problem Solving Skills
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2 comments:

  1. Jane VeederApril 12, 2012 at 11:26 AM

    Interesting article - enhancing creative problem solving by reducing our control over our attention probably supports better "divergent thinking" which is the ability to think of lots of different things (what we do in brainstorming)in relation to a problem. The other operation in creative thinking is "convergent thinking" where put together previously separate things (you came up with in the first phase) for creative solutions. Here's a link to interesting research results showing musicians can suppress their prefrontal cortex (planning) activity when they improvise: http://www.science20.com/news_releases/study_prefrontal_cortex_in_jazz_musicians_winds_down_when_improvising

    Jane Veeder

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  2. hycApril 12, 2012 at 12:35 PM

    In that case, surgeons must be quite creative. See the related article, "Survey Reveals that 15% of Surgeons Have Alcohol Dependency"
    A new study revealed that a little more than 15 percent of surgeons have a drinking problem. Researchers conducted an anonymous survey consisting of over 25,000 surgeons about their work, lifestyle, and mood, and while only 7,197 of them completed the survey 1,112 met the criteria for alcohol abuse or dependence on the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test.

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